Ukraine mediator moves to defuse crisis

PaulSonne

DONETSK, Ukraine--The international organization tasked with helping defuse Ukraine's crisis intends to bolster its ranks with hundreds more monitors as it tries to convince both pro-Russia and pro-Europe activists who have occupied buildings across Ukraine to stand down.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-nation organization including Russia and Ukraine that has long served as a mediator in tense spots, sent the deputy chief of its Ukrainian monitoring mission to Donetsk on Saturday to decide upon steps to reach that goal.

The OSCE now has about 100 monitors across Ukraine but plans to "fast track" its ranks to 300 people and ultimately hopes to have a 500-strong team on the ground, said Michael Borciurkiw, a spokesman for the Ukrainian special monitoring mission.

A joint agreement signed in Geneva on April 17 by the U.S., Russia, the European Union and Ukraine called for activists across Ukraine to surrender their weapons and vacate occupied buildings.

The agreement tasked the OSCE mission with playing "a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation" of such measures.

For weeks, OSCE staff have been monitoring the situation on the ground in Ukraine's east, which has emerged as the latest point of anti-Kiev sentiment since activists began occupying municipal and security buildings across the region early this month.

"Teams have been getting access," Mr. Borciurkiw said. "There have been some physical barriers, checkpoints and things like that. ... In most cases, with some negotiation, they are allowed through."

In a report (http://www.osce.org/node/117859) issued Saturday, the organization described the situation in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as "tense owing to the continued activity of armed opponents of the central government." The OSCE said the rest of the country's south and east remained "stable and relatively calm."

As for Ukraine's capital, the report said "progress is already being made in freeing buildings and removing barricades" in and around Kiev's Independence Square, where many pro-Europe protesters continue to remain camped out.

No such progress was reported in Ukraine's east, where pro-Russia activists in and around Donetsk have occupied buildings and demanded a referendum on the future of their region. OSCE officials have met with many of the people occupying the buildings as part of the monitoring mission, but the organization hasn't said how it plans to convince them to vacate the premises.

Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of organizing the building takeovers to undermine a Kiev government it has refused to recognized. Russia has denied that.

In a television appearance late Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia still had forces stationed near the Ukrainian border.

"Of course, we have troops in various regions--and we have troops in the region of the Ukrainian border," Mr. Peskov said in a state TV interview. "These troops are deployed there--some on a permanent basis, some due to what's currently happening in Ukraine itself."

Mr. Peskov described Ukraine as a country that just had an armed coup and noted that Russia had every right to move troops internally to any part of its own territory as a precaution. He said the troops on the border aren't influencing the unrest in Ukraine's east.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the month-long deadline he issued Thursday for Ukraine to start paying its outstanding Russian gas bill had nothing to do with the timing of the Ukrainian presidential elections, scheduled to take place just over a week after the deadline, on May 25.

"It's totally unrelated to the elections," Mr. Putin said in an interview Saturday with a Russian state TV program. "We don't associate economic processes with political ones in Ukraine." But he said Russia "cannot wait forever" for the $525 million he says Ukraine was supposed to pay Russia on April 7 for its March delivery alone.

If Ukraine doesn't start paying for the deliveries within a month, Russia will begin providing only gas Ukraine pays for in advance, Mr. Putin warned on Thursday. Two days later, on Saturday, Mr. Putin suggested he was drawing a line, noting that Ukraine now owes Russia $2.2 billion in back payments for natural gas deliveries.

"We cannot shift the burden of maintaining a 45-million strong country onto the Russian budget and Russian taxpayers," the Russian president said, referring to Ukraine.

Mr. Putin also said that the Russian military forces who "helped" Crimea hold a referendum that led to its annexation by Russia would receive official state awards.

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